The Try-Works

Just got this today.  Funny, Al Lewis has a blog at the Denver Post where he posts correspondence, and for some reason I ain’t seen hide nor hair of this letter.

Wonder why?

Cajamarca, Peru
August 9, 2007

Mr. Al Lewis
Columnist, Denver Post

Dear Mr. Lewis,

I would like to send an open letter to you and to the academic community of the University of Denver.

I have read your column, Not all that Shines is Good (was this the original title?), and I feel only consternation and indignation at the decision of the Dean of the School of International Studies at Denver University to award a prize to the ex-CEO of Newmont, Mr. Wayne Murdy, “for building relationships between Denver and the rest of the world.”  Due to the actions of Newmont, for the rest of the world where this company operates, Denver, Colorado is now seen as the headquarters of the company that destroys our ecosystems, corrupts our societies, threatens our lives, and condemns our people to live in pollution and poverty.

I am a parish priest in Cajamarca, where the Yanacocha Mine operates, the largest gold mine in Latin America, of which Newmont is the principal shareholder.  The majority of my life has been spent studying in different universities in Peru, as well as the Papal Gregorian University in Rome.  My life has been tied to academic work at universities and to pastoral service among the poorest peasants of my diocese, helping them to live in harmony with God, their brothers and sisters, and Nature.  I have always believed that universities are places for searching for knowledge and truth, and ethically I have always felt that “the truth shall set us free” (John 8.32).

So I was completely dumbfounded to hear that Denver University awarded a prize to Mr. Wayne Murdy, who has been responsible not only for the economic success of Newmont, but also for the destruction of habitats and the suffering of so many people in Ghana, Bolivia, Indonesia, and Cajamarca, Peru.

I met Mr. Murdy in two shareholders’ meetings in Denver, which I attended to present a group of demands having to do with violations of human rights and environmental damages that his company is committing in Cajamarca.  On both occasions, Mr. Murdy publicly committed to write letters responding to the demands.  Mr. Murdy lied to us, as he never sent the letters.  On the contrary, his company initiated an espionage operation in 2006 to intimidate and endanger the security of environmental leaders in Cajamarca. And in recent months, we have received death threats, and dirty campaigns have been unleashed against us in many of the media connected to Yanacocha.  Most painful is that three peasant leaders who were defending their water and lands have been killed for opposing Newmont’s expansion of mining activities in Cajamarca (November 2004 in La Zanja, August 2006 in Combayo, and November 2006 in Yanacanchilla.)

Yanacocha removes more than 600 tons of rock daily, it consumes more than 3 million gallons of fuel monthly in the watershed of my region, and it uses immense quantities of cyanide and water for leaching.  The consequences are devastating: lakes, springs, rivers and streams have disappeared, in order to make way for new monstrous mountains for cyanide leaching.  In all of the rivers affected by the mining operations, there have been systematically documented fish deaths.  Hundreds of peasant families have lost their water sources, and many others complain that their livestock have died because they cannot drink the water, or they die from unexplained strange illnesses. As the official health statistics show, so-called environmental illnesses have increased exponentially in the region: dermatitis, conjunctivitis, and respiratory illnesses- all during the same period of time as Newmont’s mining operations.

Of course, Yanacocha has also received awards in Peru: for provision of water, for social responsibility, and also for their work in communication.  All of these awards have been given by associations tied to the government, which is Newmont’s principal ally due to the money and benefits that many times are given to the families of government authorities for jobs or contracts with the company; or in other cases they have been awarded by private associations that receive donations or contributions from the mining company itself.  Personally, I had thought that only in poor countries would important institutions such as universities beg for funds from the companies that then impose conditions on research results.  I know that Denver is a city that has benefited from Newmont’s income.  But should a school in that University forget or turn a blind eye to the fact that a large part of that income comes from the dirty work that Newmont does in the rest of the world?  Even worse, that the School of International Studies awards a prize to Wayne Murdy for “building relationships between Denver and the rest of the world”.  The relationships that poor countries such as Peru would hope for with Denver are relationships of respect, collaboration, and solidarity, and not of lies, exploitation and abuse. As long as American institutions, such as the School of International Studies of Denver University, continue to close their eyes to the reality that Americans’ well-being is achieved at the cost of suffering, pollution, and exploitation of poor countries’ resources, prizes will not be awarded for the goodwill and wisdom of illustrious American citizens in solidarity with the rest of the world, but rather to promote impunity and justify greed, which in our countries translates into more poverty, more corruption, and environmental contamination.

What unpleasant news for the people of Ghana, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Peru to find out that a school at an American university, in exchange for financial support, ends up paying homage to a company such as Newmont, whose history is stained with the suffering of many countries!

Worse, in Cajamarca, Murdy’s award will not be seen as something far removed from our history.  According to the logic of the Dean of the business school at Denver University, certainly Pizarro, the Spanish conqueror, should be awarded a prize because over 500 years ago, also out of greed for gold, he murdered thousands of indigenous people and killed Atahualpa, the Inca ruler, a curious way in which the powerful of the North think they are creating relationships between our countries.  It is unacceptable that a University would be complicit in this.

Sincerely,
Father Marco Arana Zegarra
Recipient of the National Award for Human Rights, Peru

Word also has it that Tom Rowe has responded to Vincent Carroll’s horseshit column (first update).  Anyone wanna take a bet on whether the Rocky Mountain News prints it?

Stay tuned.